Empty Seats- Coventry City 2 Watford 3

I know I could be partly accused of actually writing a blog about football parking but as I've said previously, unless you go on the coaches or a non-existent football train then it is a very big part of your day. I think I've also made the point that I can't imagine any other local amenity being subject to the same conditions. The local council accepting a planning proposal from Tesco but then saying 'oh by the way, no-one is allowed to park with 2 miles of the store unless they've pre-registered or are prepared to pay a whopping £10'.

The excuse at Coventry is environmental. I wonder what it'll change to when cars are eventually all green. I mention Tesco deliberately because there is an enormous one next to the Ricoh Arena with free parking for two hours. They have security people at the car park entry asking you 'Football or Shopping'. I was aware of this having been to the Ricoh before. My tips if you want to get away with parking in the Tesco are saying 'shopping' obviously but also to go in civvies with no obvious football paraphernalia on show.

One thing I wasn't expecting was then to be checked on the way out whether or not I'd been to the football. Luckily I'd actually got lunch from Tesco and so had a carrier bag with me which I was able to show as evidence to avoid a £50 fine, whilst subtly throwing the programme on the floor.

The Ricoh is the most commercial of all the new grounds. I know this is a bit like saying one type of apple is more apple-y than the others but the Ricoh really tries to squeeze every last penny out of the experience. A big fuss was being made of the fact Take That will perform there in the summer and you couldn't miss the plugs for local band The Enemy who were played both before the start and at half time. The whole experience leaves you feeling slightly grubby.

I shall skip mention of the first half as it was tedious in the extreme apart from a Lloyd Doyley shot which went just wide. The half conjured reminders of our pre-season friendly with MK Dons. You certainly wouldn't have known we still needed a point to be safe.

The second half began in a similar vein and the upper choir of Watford supporters entertained by going through a retro chants montage from the 1999/2000 season. How is it that the majority of singers always sit together? Do they block buy a huge amount of seats or is it just luck. Today they were all housed in a seperate section high in the stand when the rest of us were all seated in the lower part of the 'Jewson' Stand.

Coventry fans either don't get on with each other or like a bit of room to spread out because there is no large concentration of them in any area of the ground. They don't seem to have decided yet which stand is going to house the hard-core of fans and as a result there doesn't appear to be any hard-core. Just a scattering of dis-interested people across a sea of sky blue seats who only come to life for the minute after their team scores. Our best chant of the day was "They're here, they're there, they're every ****ing where, empty seats, empty seats'. The ground was unfortunately built for a Premiership existence and feels cavernous when hosting Championship football. It was probably less than 50% full.

We looked unlikely to get anything out of the game even before Robbie Simpson hit a brilliant free kick past Loach to make it 2-0. Our saviour (as with Man U later in the day) was a penalty (although this one really was) when Priskin was brought crashing to the ground. Despite the crowds shouts for Lloydinho to take it Tommy Smith lined it up and after seeing his initial shot saved managed to bundle the ball home at the second time of asking.

Suddenly there was hope. I think it more started from the crowd than the players as we got going with 'Hoist Up the Watford Flag'. The players piled the pressure on and won two corners in quick succession. For the second one Raziak leapt above everyone else to head superbly into the Coventry net.

We then survived the hacking down of Jenkins, which ended his participation, and the subsequent arrival of Danny Rose to go ahead through an unlikely cheeky back heel from Priskin. Coventry huffed and puffed and tried to find a way back into it but Daniel Fox ended any hope by elbowing Tamas for a straight red. We never looked in danger after that despite the 5 minutes injury time the ref added on.

It was our second double of the season (the other being Charlton) and safety has been achieved. So much for us all thinking after the Sheff United game that we were going down under Brendan. It took a good while but he has achieved his first major goal as Watford manager. It will be good fun indeed if he now achieves the next one that sees us becoming a 'Top 30' club.

Walking In a Mooney Wonderland- Watford 0 Birmingham City 1

I would've been a bit fed up if I'd been Gary Porter who was one of two legends present at the Vic today. He is just as much of a Horns legend as Tommy Mooney yet he got very little attention. Really this is just because he doesn't have a song and singing 'Walking in a Mooney Wonderland' was about as fun as it got this afternoon.

The first half was dull dire drab and probably several other words beginning with 'd' that I haven't the intellect to come up with. We were very poor apart from Scott Loach who made a string of stunning saves to deny the Brummies. Having said that you wouldn't have known that Birmingham were second in the Championship. They weren't that much better than us. In fact, the only way they looked like a team on the cusp of promotion was that they had all the luck that was going for the entire afternoon.

The aforementioned Mooney and Porter came on at half time to do Harry's 50/50. They are the latest tantalising legends dispatched to try and tempt us to pay over £1000 for some pre-match hospitality. Mooney even commented how rubbish the first half had been!

Hoskins had started up front for us but struggled with the 4-5-1 formation we appeared to be going for. Even though its a very fluid 4-5-1, occasionally becoming a 4-4-2 or 4-3-3 poor Will just hasn't got the build or height to act as the lone striker. Unsurprisingly he came off at half time to be replaced by a fit again looking Raziak. Instantly we were transformed, regularly threatening the Birmingham goal when previously we'd struggled to get out of our own half. We had a few chances to take the lead the best of which fell to Double Agent Dan who got on the end of a great cross from Ross Jenkins only to hit it wide of the far post.

Brum rarely threatened and it was no surprise that their goal was another one of the ridiculous ones we seem to have been so good at concedeing recently. A shot deflected off Jenkins and maybe even another Watford player causing the ball to balloon over Loach and go in. The Brum fans went mad. There is something deeply galling about having promotion contenders come to town and giving them the three points they need in such a fashion. They certainly didn't deserve them.

We challenged for an equaliser but it never really looked likely. Birmingham employed award winning time wasting tactics to which the ref was completely oblivious only awarding the standard three added on minutes. A predictable and depressing loss especially as we played so well in the second half. We were defintely worth a point. Shame we couldn't have smuggled Moons and Porter on in the second half and we'd have probably got all three.

Hillsborough

There are many injustices in football but none greater than this.

No-one has ever been brought to justice for what happened 20 years ago today. Of all the articles written recently I reckon this one published in the Observer last month gives you a sense of the huge number of people affected and an insight into the cover up following the disaster.

Bear in mind this could have happened to any of us. The fans involved were doing nothing more than attending a football match. 96 of them never came home.

More shocking than the incident itself, is the actions taken by the authorities in the aftermath to bury the truth.

Families and friends who should have been grieving and mourning have spent the last 20 years unsuccesfully fighting to get justice for their loved ones.

If you feel as I do, then please take a moment to visit the Hillsborough Justice Campaign website and consider helping out.

Upping Their Game- Norwich City 2 Watford 0

Things still look a little iffy. Three games to go, six points clear but everyone at the bottom end is upping their game.

Maybe Danny Rose is a secret agent after all.

I played around on the BBC predictor site after the result today. It does us a slight disservice in that it omits our game with Coventry so you can only ever end up with us playing 45 games when everyone else has played 46. I couldn't quite come up with a set of results that would send us down but we were only escaping by the skins of our teeth.

Saturday is going to be very tough. I can't really imagine us getting anything out of it. If results go against us down at the bottom we could find ourselves having to up our game against Coventry. If we don't, who fancies an uncomfortable afternoon watching Nathan Ellington, playing his last game for Derby before returning to the Vic, trying to send his parent club down to League One? Stranger things have happened although Duke does seem to have rather fallen out of favour since the arrival of Nigel Clough. I wonder why?

Ill- Watford 1 Barnsley 1

With my kids you can tell when they are really ill. They say they feel ill a lot. Especially if they've got to go to school or do some homework. However two minutes after saying it they are often playing trampolines on the sofa or asking for some chocolate. If they are really ill they will just flop around on the sofa and show little interest in anything sweet and you think 'Oh my god they really aren't well'.

My equivalent of this is football. I might say I've got some sort of Man Flu at times but should the 'Orns be at home I'll still somehow find the strength to go.

Not today. My body is in the throws of fighting some sort of flu like virus and the last thing I felt like doing was sitting on a hard plastic seat out in the cold for two hours. Oh my god I'm really not well.

Still doesn't sound like it was a classic. Good to see us creep up to 14th. We could end up in the Top 10 if we really tried. But unfortunately we seem to have decided to let the season peter out. I reckon we might do okay against Cov and Derby but both Birmingham and Norwich will want it more than us. Hopefully, by the time Brum come to the Vic I should be back to wanting to go no matter what, even if the result is likely to go against us.

Mistakes- Watford 2 Southampton 2

Southampton are a club who seem to have made plenty of mistakes since we faced them at Villa Park six years ago most of them involving decisions by Rupert Lowe. I said in my last entry that they now seem to be facing their most major crisis at the worst possible time in the season but to be fair to them last night, they were certainly up for it.

They weren't better than us by any means but they had that desire and desperation of needing the points (even though I'm sure in the end it will be futile due to affairs off the pitch) whereas we've already got the look of a team that has relaxed because we've secured another season of Championship football. Whether this is a good or bad thing I'm not sure. After Saturday and tonight I do think we are safe. With Forest 9 points behind us, five games to go and a whole host of teams between us and them I can't imagine a scenairo where we'll go down, especially if justice is served on the Saints.

So we allowed ourselves a few mistakes tonight but still played well enough to deserve to win. To start with no one seemed to pick up Saejis who was allowed a free header to score the Saints opening goal. However we responded well and Cauna clearly sensed that Kelvin Davis is a seriously dodgy keeper by blasting the ball at him to equalise when the more sensible thing appeared to be to cross it.

Cauna had an interesting debut. At times inspired and the best player on the pitch but at others he showed some truly woeful decision making like passing the ball far too far into the Saints half when no 'Orn was anywhere near it. Like Danny Rose I think he'll be entertaining and maybe frustrating to watch over the next month.

We were the better side for the rest of the first half. Ian Bolton and Les Taylor were introduced to the crowd at half time. Bolton still looked like he could easily fit into our defence despite presumably now being in his late 50's. We were still on top at the beginning of the second. However the Saints played as if their lives depended on it and forced some great saves out of Scott Loach.

We went ahead through a rare Priskin header from a corner and then, yet again, were victims of a truly absymal mistake by the referee and linesman running the Rous Stand line. McAnuff got clear of all but the last defender who then sythed down Jobi clearly in the penalty area. We all saw it but the ref and linesman deemed that it was about 2 yards outside. Feeling annoyed, at least we had the comfort of knowing the ref would send off the offender for being the last man. But no, the card he pulled out was yellow. Are the officials running a competition on who can make the worse decision in front of the Rookey? Atwell and Bannister are still winning but there have been some impressive attempts to be second.

Southampton continued desperately pushing forward which made for an entertaining end to end last twenty minutes. Then Rodgers made a rare mistake by choosing to take off Priskin for our new Estonian defender Stepanov. Had it been 3-1 this would've been a sensible decision to close out the game. But at 2-1 with an opponent prepared to doing anything to score it looked iffy as if they did score we'd restricted our attacking options in order to reply.

Of course, the Saints did score and not through some desperate bundling the ball over the line for survival type goal but a fabulous free kick that curled round the wall and flew past a diving Loach.

Our attacking options may have been restricted but we still had one last glorious opportunity to score which wins the award for mistake of the night. Jobes sent Tommy Smith off down the right flank and his cross went past Davis to give Danny Rose an opportunity to put the ball into an empty net. It looked easy. All he had to do was make contact and we would win. I reckon even I could've done it. But for some reason Rose jumped over the ball. It set me and the bloke I sit next to wondering whether Rose is actually some double agent who has come to Watford to make sure we don't score. It was that bad.

The Southampton players and fans celebrated as if they'd won promotion. The Vicarage Road faithful were fairly muted in their appreciation which I thought was very unfair as we had actually played well in a thoroughly entertaining game. Yes we made some mistakes but don't we all. None though quite as big as the ones the ref and linesman seem to make every game on the Rous Stand side.

Parklife- Doncaster Rovers 1 Watford 2

You've probably noticed a common theme running through these posts is the subject of parking. Nothing to do with football of course, but to the fan who favours the car over the coach one of vital importance.

Well, I'm pleased to announce finally of a club with a new ground that have got it right. Yes, there was parking at Donnie. Loads and loads of it. A dedicated club car park which anyone could park in. A large retail centre next door with lots of parking which didn't discriminate against football fans and was free! There were also various industrial estate parking places too. I got there far too early but even if I'd left it late there were enough spaces to cater for all of us. Heaven.

Not only had they provided places to park, but the ground is built next to a nice park as well. This gives the fan who needs something to do having consumed a KFC the chance to walk it off round a lake and up and down some hills whilst observing the various pre-match rituals of the locals. Before I arrived I had visions of Doncaster being a bit grim and industrial but it wasn't like that at all. It was great. The best new ground I've been to. They've even copied the Ipswich idea of getting people to play the game beforehand as there were several five a side pitches nearby along with an athletics track.

Inside the food outlets were spacious and all manned, something that should but never does happen in the Rous Stand. The toilets were cavernous with no usual half time queue. The stewards were polite and helpful and even allowed you to sit anywhere within the stand we were allocated. These all sound like such small insignifanct things but they make a huge difference to a fans experience. Especaily the stewarding. If the stewards are petty, it only increases the likelihood of trouble. I don't mean trouble in a throw back to the 80's type way but unnecessary rule enforcing just leads to unpleasantness which usually results in the stewards enforcing their authority and throwing people out. Yesterday they were friendly and treated us like human beings and we responded accordingly. If only all clubs could be like Donnie.

Another crucial thing they'd got right was building a stadium that corresponds to the average amount of fans. Coventry especially could learn that there really is no point in building a ground that will cope well when you're playing Man Utd when in reality you going to be facing Sheffield United far more regularly. All the stands were well populated, the ground was compact and I felt close to the pitch even in the back row yet the leg room was spacious.

On the pitch things were obviously good too although I still would've said all that even if we'd lost 4-0. Donnie started more threateningly and looked good in attack all afternoon, but our defence, and especially Mike Williamson was excellent, snuffing out the threat. We coped well with that early pressure and then started to respond in kind. Priskin got the ball in his favourite position where he was ahead of his chasing defender and although he was on the right flank and needed a Donnie defender to turn the ball in for him the result was the same. One nil. A few minutes later we were down the same flank again when the ball was crossed for Don Cowie to head over the despairing Neil Sullivan. From being up against it we'd delivered two quick killer blows and then frustrated our opponents for the rest of the half.

Although I'm never a fan of the Luton hating songs as I feel we waste far too much of our time and energy singing about them, even I joined in with the "Its blue, its square, they're going down to there, Luton Town, Luton Town" chant that got going during the first half. Yes they've been ridiculously harshly treated with the 30 point penalty but this did cause some hilarity in the away end. As did the name of the half time entertainment cheerleading troupe, the Rovers Baguettes. At least that's what it sounded like. The mind boggles. Is it a Northern euphemism a bit like roasting?

We carried on keeping Donnie at bay for most of the second half which was made interesting by our new loanee Danny Rose who James Chambers and the rest of the defence found to be a right handful. Kind of like an Anthony MacNamee with a few more pies inside him I reckon he'll be a lot of fun to watch in the remaining six games.

With five minutes to go an unlikely long range shot from James Hayter beat Scott Loach and suddenly nerves that hadn't been present all afternoon leapt to the fore as one remembered the Cardiff and Sheffield Wednesday experiences. However we saved our best display of the game for the finale. I've been critical in the past of us passing it around for the sake of it and have said I'd rather see us get a third than sitting on a second. However, with Priskin and Cowie taken off and Tommy Smith not having his best game ever we never looked like getting a third today despite Sullivan's dodgyness. So we sensibly passed the ball around and ran it into the corners to run the clock down. Despite the home fans attempting to lift their team for the only time all afternoon we comfortably saw it out.

I wish Donnie well and hope they stay up. With Charlton surely gone and Southampton having a major crisis at just the wrong moment I reckon they, like us, will actually end up more mid table than bottom six.

Player of the Season

VOTE LLOYD!!!



He's been brilliant, especially since BR took over, he would bleed yellow and black and it will annoy the hell out of the man who sits behind me.

Thanks Anarchists- Wycombe Wanderers Reserves 1 Watford Reserves 1

Living just a couple of miles from Marlow's impressive sounding Alfred Davis Memorial Ground I'd followed this fixture for months as it got moved back and back through the reserves list. First of all pencilled in for Jan 31st, then moved to Mar 31st I looked forward to a rare chance to see the second string 'Orns in action. Working where I do I just can't get to Borehamwood for 7pm. Then they moved it to April 1st. Bugger. I do a language course on a Wednesday evening paid for by my employer. Not something to miss. Oh, but the programme reckons it kicks off at 2pm anyway so I couldn't have gone. Never mind.

However upon checking the website today it was back on for 7pm. And then about ten minutes later, joy of joys, my class was postponed due to the G20 demonstations. The instructor has to come through Liverpool Street and didn't fancy it. Thanks anarchists. I don't agree with what you're doing but I appreciate you letting me go to football.

So after a very boring week and a half when not much happened other than Jimmy Salad revealed we are facing major challenges, Elton's latest strop came to an end and the FA bought some dodgy rip off football shirts and declared them as the new national kit, I was back watching the Golden Boys in action.

I couldn't think of a nicer place (other than the Vic) to watch it either. A perfect early spring evening and a great view as Marlow's ground must be the only non-league stadium to have a stand that height wise is on a par with the lower bits of the Upper Rous.

The crowd was the usual odd mix at a non first team game of anoraks (of which I proudly include myself), families, WAGS, footballing professionals and old blokes on whom clubs like Marlow must survive. Tonight the old blokes were employed as both turnstile operators and occasional ball boys.

Even odder still was the presence of Peter Taylor, former England caretaker manager and Sven's No.2, who was just four rows in front of me. Okay, maybe not that odd or surprising given that he is Wycombe's manager. Even so, I couldn't help thinking that if things had turned out very different for him he might have actually been managing the national side tonight against Ukraine in front of 87,548 rather than watching a Combination match in a crowd that probably didn't number 87.

It was a young team put out by Sean Dyche and the only ones I felt I knew were Jordan Parkes, Liam Henderson and Lewis Young who looked taller than he does at the Vic and a giant compared to brother Ashley.

Estonian's Andrei Stepanov made his first start in a yellow (well actually red) shirt and did well, proving himself to be another no nonsense Mike Williamson type of player.

Sean Dyche was vocal throughout although not in the menacing kind of way that he played, but encouraging his mainly young squad all the time. He didn't seem that keen on the sideways football we played a lot of in the first half though and at one point shouted 'forward, forward, forwards'. He cut an impressive figure as a coach and I would think he'll eventually make the step up to first team management.

The only goal of the half came right at the end. To be fair our defence couldn't do much with the wicked cross that came into our box which Jordan Lumsden (great name) got his head on to sending the ball arcing over keeper Stuart Searle to put Wycombe one up.

In the second half we were much better and dominated throughout. Within 10 minutes of the restart we were level when a cross caused confusion in the Wycombe defence and Matthew Whichelow, who looked a bit Nordin Wooter-ish, forced the ball home from a couple of yards out. We had plenty of attacking possession after that and produced a few promising chances but never really had the necessary killer instinct to get what we deserved out of the match.

Peter Taylor disappeared during the second half persumably to watch the England game and think of what might have been. I managed to get back to see the second half, but it wasn't a patch on what I'd seen earlier in the evening. I'll always hate international weeks (parly because they are actually fortnights) but a bit of reserve football helped made the wait for Donny on Saturday a bit more palatable.